and counted six cameras in all: one on each corner, one overlooking the loading dock, and one above the only pedestrian entrance, a single door on the side farthest from the strip club.
There were two cars parked next to the loading dock—a vintage BMW and a red Mazda hatchback. That meant someone was inside, possibly watching me on a screen right at that moment. My pulse roared, and I savored the surge of fresh adrenaline; it would help me stay sharp.
I kept my head down and approached the pedestrian entrance. The door looked heavy and solid. Instead of a traditional lock, there was a keypad above the knob. My heart rate spiked; this couldn’t be picked like a regular lock. And in combination with the cameras, it suggested that the security around this building was tight. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of the lock.
As I got back into the car, Ripley looked up.
“What did you find?”
I showed him the picture. “What do you think? Can you hack it?”
“No,” he said. “Out of my league. But maybe I can get the pass code.”
“How?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Most people’s door locks aren’t connected to Wi-Fi. That would be incredibly stupid. But if someone keeps a record of the pass code on a computer—one that’s currently turned on and connected to the network—I might be able to find it.”
My pulse quickened. “Great! Do it!”
“There’s a risk.”
“What risk? Can’t you just hack in from here?”
“I could,” Ripley said, his voice rising. “But I’d have to reset their router.”
I sucked in a breath. He was being such a goddamn know-it-all. “I get it, you’re a computer genius and I’m not. Could you please explain this in English? I don’t have time to Google every word you say.”
Ripley gaped at me, shook his head, and then answered in a defeated tone.
“If I restart their router, their IT guy will know immediately that they’ve been hacked.”
“Does that even matter? I mean, what can they do?”
“Well, for one thing, they could change all their passwords.”
I bit my lip. “Including the pass code to the front door.”
Ripley nodded.
I glanced out the window at the looming beige warehouse. We were so close.
“Do it,” I said.
“All right,” Ripley replied, and started typing.
After five minutes, he seemed no closer to “cracking the network,” and I was starting to get nervous about the security guy at the strip club. He had come out twice to glance around the lot, and both times his eyes had lingered on our car. I told Ripley we should move to the McDonald’s next door, but he said the warehouse’s Wi-Fi signal wouldn’t reach that far.
“Will you please stop tapping your foot?” I said. Ripley didn’t respond.
Ten minutes later, I was about to call the whole thing off when Ripley finally declared, “I’m in!”
I leaned over to watch the screen as he entered yet another incomprehensible command.
“What are you doing?”
“Unleashing a bot that will scour the network for strings of characters that look like passwords.”
“So we just wait?”
“There are only two PCs connected. It shouldn’t take very— Ha!”
“You found it?”
Ripley shot me a glare. “Will you please. Back. Off.” He turned back to the screen and clicked on a folder. “People are so stupid.” He gestured at the screen in disgust. “This guy Doug—Devereaux’s stage manager or whatever—has a ‘friend’ in his contact file, first name Top, last name Secret. The Notes field is a list of everything a hacker could want. CCVs on his credit cards. Social security numbers. His wife’s mother’s maiden name . . . Jesus, his passport number is in here—who does that?”
“What about passwords?”
He scrolled, frowned. “Shit. No. He uses password management software.”
“The guy writes down his credit card numbers but uses a program to hide his passwords?”
Ripley rolled his eyes as if explaining to a four-year-old why the sky is blue. I wanted to throttle him.
“It’s not for security. It’s because he’s lazy. He doesn’t want to have to remember them.”
He scrolled, clicked. “Wait a minute.” He pointed to a block of text that read:
Facebook = Janey middle + last 4 ssn
First NV Bank = Janey middle + Doug Jr. bday
“They’re hints,” he said. “Not the passwords themselves. But if we know his wife’s middle name—”
“You don’t have to mansplain hints to me. Is there one that says ‘door code’?”
He shot me a hurt look, then scrolled down. The text read: